Author
Topic: Longitudinal listening (Read 10684 times)

Undershadow

The ‘currently listening’ node on the Forum allows a snapshot of a listener’s intake. It occurred to me to stretch that time frame out and represent listening experience over a longer period – a sort of longitudinal take on ‘currently listening’. What I discovered in looking back was that I’d found myself concentrating very much on music that was drone-based, but, more specifically than this, music that had a very much identifiable dynamic that I’d characterise verbally as: ebb-flow, swell-relent, surge-subside. When in full-on mode the most apposite metaphor of the sound was: billowing. When in more subdued: swelling.I decided to put some of these favoured sounds/dynamics together into a mix (n.b. many are extracts of longer pieces), both for my own amusement and for that of those who share my somewhat recondite tastes, some of whom have been known to hang out hereabouts . In the end there was too much for one single mix – it tumesced into two.Details follow for your downloading delight, if you fancy it, that is. (with apols for formatting insufficiencies in the tracklisting - I don't know how to make everything nicely aligned when importing it from Word)

Excellent job on the mixes. Thanks for posting them. These will definitely get airplay around here, may use them as sleep music as well.

I did a similar mix last year called "Breathing", same sort of rise & fall feel to it. Although your mix is a bit darker & more droney. That is a good thing because you've got tunes in there that I wouldn't have thought of, have forgotten about, never heard of, etc. So it makes for an interesting listen.

Undershadow

Dark, eh? Well, yeah, I guess I’d say the second of the two mixes is sort of the Evil Twin, though I would stress that neither of these mixes really gets into that full-on long-dark-staring-into-the-black-abyss mode beloved of card-carrying members of the Dark Ambient Chapter. I like ‘eerie’ and ‘moody’ and ‘crepuscular’, even ‘tenebrous’, but nothing too doom-laden or scary.I’ll definitely look into your “Breathing” assemblage when I have time. Thanks for comparing notes

And enjoying most of it so far. Some ups and downs.Loved the opening Berry !Found the Chalk surprisingly unlistenable/resonant.The Bradley is a breath of fresh air ... a stand-out.I know most of the others after that, but haven't got to them yet.

You do like yer music served up with a lot of noise rather than pure tones Me too.

Undershadow

Thanks for the feedback, Anthony (screeech!!!... whiiiine!!! )Yes, I would've expected the second set of swells to appeal more to your tastes, now you come to mention it

Re: specific comments. I know from previous exchanges that you like the cut of Berry’s drone cloth, and can understand where you’re coming from re: Chalk, who likes to pursue his timbral enquiry up the higher end, and somewhat more attenuated than the average dronologist. I guess I included his track to provide some high-end/light to offset the prevailing low-end/shade of most of the extracts. Interestingly, I think Chalk has been a significant influence on a later Brit-droner, Paul Bradley, an artist who I feel (and I know you rate him too) has become a more accomplished and tonally wide-ranging practitioner. Some tracks on Chalk’s latest, Time of Hayfield, are very much in the same zone as Bradley’s Chroma, and, though I feel this latest Chalk is one of his best and fullest in sound, I kind of feel Bradley has surpassed his mentor. And that Modell/Mantra, BTW, is just 4 minutes of what is, on the Hypnos recording, a 34-minute sluicing in subaquatics, with that beautiful twilit-keys chord progression for accompaniment That ending Basinski loop is a lovely one – perhaps my fave of the whole of his 4 DisLoop vols. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to get through the full 40 minutes – it’s that same chord progression over and over, with only a gradual disintegrative aspect to the texture to serve by way of developmental dynamic. I guess that (development/dynamics) is not what you listen to Billy B. for, though.

I'm a bit (!) late to this thread, but I listened to all swells and billows i today and felt the need to comment. I live in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and the mix was excellent company whilst walking the trails near my home. Thanks a lot, Alan - and if round 2 is "darker", I'm especially looking forward to it.

Undershadow

This thread was started before I was on the forum. Alan, anyway to have these mixes reposted somewhere??

I'll buy you a basket of fish, chips and a pint of something stout-y in exchange deal?

Jasoninfractionrecords.com

Well, Jason, that all sounds very congenial, but looks like you don't need to ply me with tasty tidbits and booze for access to these mixes, since Dave squealed before I could take you up on your largesse. Anyway, in general, I've put quite a few things up at http://albient.livejournal.com over the last few months, though I can't vouch for the functionality of any of the supposedly streamable bits since some shysters operating a site called boomp3.com have turned out to be unreliable stream-wise. I'm slowly going through the process of replacing those with streamable versions through another site. The download links are largely still active, as far as I'm aware - at least those that link to the sendspace file storage facility.